Beaches in Lebanon

Two hundred kilometres of eastern Mediterranean coast, heavily built and heavily polluted along much of it, with a handful of protected stretches where the natural shore survives. The Tyre Coast Nature Reserve in the south is the country's only reserve covering a beach, and it exists because loggerhead and green turtles still nest there. Most of the accessible coastline north of Beirut is occupied by private beach clubs charging entry, which is the normal arrangement here and surprises visitors expecting public sand; the free shore is mostly the rocky sections and the city's own Ramlet al-Baida. Byblos, continuously inhabited for some seven thousand years and one of the oldest ports in the world, sits on the coast north of Beirut, and Tyre and Sidon do the same to the south, so almost every beach on this coast has several thousand years of harbour behind it. The country's mountains hold snow into spring and the coast and the ski slopes are ninety minutes apart, which is the fact the tourist board has traded on since the 1960s. Practically: the season runs May to October, the sea is warm and calm through it, and southern Lebanon's security situation changes — current travel advice should be checked before any visit, and this register takes no view on it.